Greedy Goblin

Monday, November 30, 2015

Guide: Providence and Ark

A freighers is bumpable. Which means that if anyone wants to kill it, it dies. The gankers can keep it on grid indefinitely and can attempt to kill it as many times as they please. There is nothing you can do about it. However you can do something about not being picked.

The most overlooked way to haul freighter-sized cargo is don't! Use a collateraled contract and let someone else take the risk!

However someone must do the hauling, and this someone can be you, for whatever reason. The advice is simple: you fly Providence/Ark in highsec or maybe an Obelisk. All the other freighters are bad. Why? Because freighers only have low slots, so can only be armor or hull tanked. They don't have fitting space for Damage Control module, so if you hull tank, you must use 3x reinforced bulkheads which decrease cargo size. Recently every ship got 33% hull resist, so it became competitive with Obelisk. Below you can see the EHP and cargo size of the freighters with MC and HG/SM implants:

Name

EHP (k)

Cargo (k m3)

3x Bulk Charon

419

410

3x Bulk Fenrir

376

383

3x Bulk Obelisk

523

388

3x Bulk Providence

489

384

Armor Providence + Slaves

496

544

While the Obelisk has 5% more EHP, the Providence has 40% more cargo space and you get the opportunity to protect it if gankers start to bump it, with a link ship with armor modules and with an armor logi ship. Seeing these on grid will make even the most dedicated gankers leave, unless your cargo is over 2B. The fit is:

While these are top deadspace modules, they are cheap since no one uses platings. High-grade Slave implants are a must. You can greatly decrease travel time by having the escort alt webbing you into warp (web decreases max speed, so when you activate it, the formerly 30% speed will be enough to warp).

If you bring your JF to highsec, use a similarly fit Ark and with links, you get something that can troll the Burn events of Goons and even a hundred-strong gank fleet fails miserably on it. Also, always have fuel, no jump timer and an exit cyno ready:

The reason why freighter ganking is so widespread is that people do extreme amount of stupid with them. I analyzed 120 kills in the last Burn Amarr event and found most of them to deserve their fate. Don't be them!

Good guide.... I always use a webbing alt for long hauls and when I decide that I cannot afford losing the cargo.

I still consider the "freighter balance" to be a CCP troll agaisnt their customers.Although those who used bulkheads from day one were better off than the gamblers who used cargo extpansions and lost theri ships....

I have never tried to duel between my freighter and webber as they were both in the same corp, but I think it is still a nuiosance that the webber gets an 1 minute timer....

a good webbing ship will get your agility fitted freighter into warp before they can even scan your hold. If you do get bumped then a fast frigate can burn in the direction you are getting bumped and you can simply warp to the frigate.